Till yesterday, women were only seen as homemakers. However today, we see them wearing powerful badges in several divisions globally. Along with the advancement in technology, young people are becoming more creative day by day. According to the U.S. Census, “women entrepreneurs own approximately 20 percent of all employer businesses nationwide.”
In the modern era, where gender equality takes the upper hand, women are trying to fill the gaps by solving numerous societal problems through startups and communities. Divya Gandotra Tandon is one such young entrepreneur from Jammu and Kashmir, who is racing through her entrepreneurial journey.
Speaking with Life Beyond Numbers, Divya Gandotra Tandon has shared her inspiring story with us.
Started As A YouTuber
Currently living in Noida with her Aunt for her further studies, Divya is pursuing a Diploma in Computer Science and Engineering from Prince Institute of Innovative Technology (PIIT), Greater Noida. She started her career as a Tech YouTuber at the end of 2015 with the channel name Technical Divya.
Due to some circumstances her channel was not going as she expected it to be. Then, Divya made a new channel with the name Tech Divya which has 30 thousand subscribers so far. Divya also narrated her incident that led her to start the YouTube channel and then become an entrepreneur.
“In 2015, everyone in my class was talking about Technical Guruji, that he is making videos and other stuff. I was impressed by his work and at that time I thought why don’t I try the same? Everyone will talk about me as well. That was so stupid that I had no idea, that this will be so difficult for me. Being an introvert, I was not good at public speaking, and that problem was reflected in all my videos. But I tried hard to make my level best” said Divya.
Despite efforts, challenges followed her, especially living at a place like Jammu which has frequent internet blackouts made her journey even tougher. Shooting videos with a less quality camera, and exporting in 240p using 3G internet, Divya managed it all. The never give up attitude pushed her to extra limits.
In 2016, she got a Jio Sim with the fastest 4G internet access and was satisfied with the speed of the internet. Since then, Divya has been making videos regularly. In 2017, she started getting sponsorship and barter units for promotional activities, and that’s when everything changed for Divya. She also had a good smartphone, a mic, and a laptop to edit.
In 2018, she came to Noida for her studies and at that time she started getting calls from brands for their launch events and confidential close door meetings.
YouTuber To Entrepreneur
Moving forward, Divya always wanted to try something new and entrepreneurship was something that she never thought of.
“Being a YouTuber, I had some bit knowledge about the audience engagement and content creation so I used that knowledge on Facebook and Google as the algorithm was not much different. Constant work helped me a lot” added Divya.
In April 2018, she created a Facebook page and a website with her friend, which was named The Scoop Beats. And they decided to publish news on websites and memes/videos on Facebook Page. And that’s when her entrepreneurial journey began too.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it”, Divya reminisces her grandfather’s words.
Digital Content Creators, Competition, Challenges
As we all know that starting a new company is not as easy as it looks from the outside. But Divya’s never-give-up attitude turned her strong to pursue it with ease and dexterity. With huge competition on digital platforms and the ubiquity of content creators across the world, bringing new content is always challenging.
“Yes, there are many content creators in the world, and being on a digital platform we have to make something different from others so that our audience won’t change their preference” asserts Divya.
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In the start, Divya and her team used to make inspirational posts so that people would love to share them on their timeline. After that, they started making posts on Facebook that relate to life. They also started making posts on some of the most crucial issues like rape and marital abuse. Their main motive was to aware the audience of some critical problems in India.
Furthermore, when 4G Internet was shut down in Jammu, things went haywire for Divya, especially uploading videos and new content. Thankfully, COVID-19 didn’t affect her from creating more content. Instead, Divya has done a lot of things that she couldn’t explore during her regular college days. Being a student, she manages her studies, college, and YouTube work concomitantly.
Amazing Days Amid Tough Times
Amid tough times, there are happy moments as well.
“In 2018, when I was attending a smartphone launch event, I met some of the best YouTubers like Technical Guruji, Sharma Ji Technical, Harun Robert, etc. That was an amazing day” states Divya.
She further adds, “I remember in 2019, I was invited to a Google event. At that time some of the bloggers and YouTubers came to me to take selfies. That was the most beautiful moment I have on my youtube journey”.
Collabs, Looking Ahead
However, speaking of plans, Divya has it all prepared. She decided to promote democracy, free speech, reliable dissemination of information, and the wellbeing of its reference groups through her media channels. Her vision is to achieve at least the milestone of 100k subscribers and her goal is to engage audiences and deliver the best content.
“We are committed to improve the economic, environmental, and social development of the world and to boost entrepreneurship through professionalism, superior quality, and innovation. We strive for excellence and aim to exceed expectations” she says.
Plus, Divya also shares a tip concerning entrepreneurship – “The primary goal is not to make a profit but rather to create value, to change how people do business, perceive things, understand things, or to even change how they live”.
So far, Divya has also collaborated with sundry brands, to mention a few, namely, Coolpad and Infinix, etc. As an Entrepreneur, she has collaborated and worked with assorted brands and individuals like Lazy Gardener, Aquaconnect, ASCENT Technologies, and many more.
Future being unpredictable, planning is as difficult as it is necessary. Moreover, “what works in establishing our brand today might feel stale tomorrow. It’s impossible to know what the coming year might hold for our company or others, but that doesn’t mean I can’t start preparing. For longer-term planning, we have to think bigger” says Divya before signing off.